Wednesday, August 25, 2010

"If you want to be really good at something, it's going to involve relentlessly pushing past your comfort zone, along with frustration, struggle, setbacks and failures. That's true as long as you want to continue to improve, or even maintain a high level of excellence. The reward is that being really good at something you've earned through your own hard work can be immensely satisfying.

"Anders Ericsson, the world's leading researcher into high performance, has been making the case that it's not inherited talent which determines how good we become at something, but rather how hard we're willing to work — something he calls "deliberate practice." Numerous researchers now agree that 10,000 hours of such practice as the minimum necessary to achieve expertise in any complex domain. "

Related: Importance of downtime in learning and renewal; switching to watch a video clip isn't one of them. Nor the quick escape to the bookstore, which I love to do, doesn't also count, I guess. So, ditch the gadgets and take that nature walk. Focus and being clearer-headed is not to be scoffed at to do great work.